• Obama’s Nobel win: Full citation
• World leaders react to Obama’s win
• Global editorial cartoonists react to Obama’s prize
• Jeb Sharp’s weekly history podcast

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark.  This is The World.  Surprised and deeply humbled.  That’s how President Obama described how he felt when he heard he’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Here’s more of what the president had to say this morning at the White House.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement.  It’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes, and that is why I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st Century.

CLARK: Only two other U.S. presidents were awarded the Peace Prize while in office.  They were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919.  Jimmy Carter won it when he was already a former president.  The World’s Jeb Sharp begins our coverage.

JEB SHARP: Even those who support President Obama’s policies were skeptical. Charles Grant directs the Center for European Reform in London. He was chairing a conference this morning with experts and dignitaries from all over Europe. He said when the news broke people were stunned.

CHARLES GRANT: This is in a room of people who are generally sympathetic to Obama. They like his multilateralism.  They like the fact that he doesn’t talk in a unilateralist way as George Bush did, and yet the feeling was, and it’s my feeling too, how strange to award a prize to someone before they have achieved anything.  It has to be said, in terms of peace Obama has great ambitions, but has not achieved anything yet as far as we can see.

SHARP: President Obama seemed to acknowledge as much himself.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize. Men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.  But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women and all Americans want to build.

THOMAS KNOCK: This does seem to be a prize that is more prospective than retrospective.

SHARP: That’s historian Thomas Knock, an authority on Woodrow Wilson, the last sitting U.S. president to win the prize.

KNOCK: I think to encourage a certain kind of initiative and a certain kind of thinking about international relations and I think that’s a good idea.  I think a lot of people will debate whether or not this was a deserved prize, and I think Obama deserves tremendous credit, should get credit, for saying that he himself wonders whether or not he deserved this.

SHARP: The prize usually, but not always, goes to someone with a considerable peace-related achievement under their belt.  Someone like Woodrow Wilson.

KNOCK: Well, Woodrow Wilson is regarded as the father of internationalism in a sense, the founder and creator of the League of Nations, which was established at the end of the First World War to lessen the possibility of another catastrophe like the First World War.

SHARP: The League was a failure in the end, not least because Congress balked and the United States never joined.  But in the sense that it was a precursor to the United Nations, the idea eventually prevailed. Theodore Roosevelt was the other president who won a Nobel Peace Prize while in office; in his case for mediating an end to the Russian-Japanese war of 1905.  Roosevelt, of course, is famous for his line “speak softly and carry a big stick.”  For all the talk of peace, President Obama finds himself using a big stick, not least in Afghanistan. The irony of giving a Peace Prize to a man prosecuting two wars was not lost today.   For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp

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• Ladbrokes homepage

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: The announcement this morning that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize surprised a lot of people.  Even those who try to make a living predicting such things like the folks at Britain’s Ladbrokes Betting Company.  They had set the odds for the various Nobel candidates.  Robin Hutchinson is a spokesman for Ladbrokes.  And Robin, what were the odds that President Obama would come out on top?

ROBIN HUTCHINSON: Well, we were a little bit blindsided by this one, shall we say.  Barack Obama was sort of mid table in the betting.  He was 25 to 1.  For the uninitiated, that means you have to bet so you win $25 for every dollar that you spend.  So we actually saw some money for him when we cut his price to 20 to 1, that we weren’t certainly expecting that’s for sure.

CLARK: How do you determine the odds?

HUTCHINSON: Well, it’s a very complicated one because obviously with the Nobel Committee they don’t release short list as some awarding panels do. So it’s a bit of a complicated one, but we’ve got guys behind the scenes here who are looking at these things and looking across the globe obviously to see who will be the runners and riders.  So we also wait for what we call the waited money, which is when obviously our customers can have a bet.  We can see where the money is going.  We can cut our odds accordingly.  So it’s a bit of a complicated one and we’re always betting a little bit blind when it comes to these things.

CLARK: Who did you have as a favorite?

HUTCHINSON: Well, we had actually Padet Cordova, the Colombian senator as the five to one favorite. Saw some good money for her early on and then the two Chinese dissidents in the list, Hugai [PH] and Wei Jing Shang [PH].  They both came in from 7 to 1 to 5 to 1.   So we were expecting a winner from one of those three, but in actual fact as we all know now it was Barack Obama.

CLARK: So you said you cut President Obama’s odds to 20 to 1.  So I would imagine Ladbrokes didn’t do too well today, did it?

HUTCHINSON: No, unfortunately not.  It wasn’t one of our better days.  We normally obviously take most of our money on horse racing and football and that sort of thing, but we’ve got a lot of customers in Scandinavia who did very well at this one. It’s obviously very big out there given the traditions of the prize, and a lot of people in Denmark and Sweden and Norway have got their beer money for the weekend, shall we say.

CLARK: Well, who is the biggest winner?  I mean, what was the biggest payout?  You said if it was 20 to 1 for every dollar you bet, you get $20.

HUTCHINSON: Yeah, we had a few people that got around about $500 and $1,000 and that sort of thing.  So you have to be careful.  I mean, let’s put it into perspective. This isn’t the Kentucky Derby or anything like this, you know. It’s a big event globally.  It’s not necessarily a massive event betting wise.

CLARK: Yeah, I’m wondering how popular betting on the Nobel Peace Prize is.  I mean, roughly how many wagers do you get?

HUTCHINSON: Yeah, we had about 1,000 this year, and I would think that around about a quarter or a third of them were on Barack Obama’s side. That kind of puts it into context really.

CLARK: Robin Hutchinson is a spokesman for Ladbrokes the British-based odds maker.  Robin, thanks for talking with us.

HUTCHINSON: Okay, all the best.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Photo: Sabine

We’re used to hearing that land conservation is a good thing, especially for the endangered species that often live on the land being protected. But what about the people who live on that land? Journalist Mark Dowie explores that question in a new book called Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native People. His verdict? Our host Katy Clark spoke with Dowie.

• More on Mark Dowie’s book
• More on the Batwa people in Uganda
• More on Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston.  Across the globe there is often a tension between preserving land and preserving culture. Environmental groups and governments have set aside vast areas of parkland, but in an effort to protect native ecosystems, they have sometimes evicted native peoples.  Writer Mark Dowie harshly criticizes that practice in his latest book. It’s called “Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.”  Dowie writes that more than 12% of the land worldwide is now under conservation protection.  That’s an area larger than the continent of Africa.

MARK DOWIE: In the course of protecting that land, millions of people have been displaced from the land in the appeared interest of conservation. People who have been living, for the most part, have been living on those lands for hundreds or thousands of years, clearly living in a sustainably or the conservation establishment wouldn’t be interested in preserving the land, and it’s turned out to be a mistake.  And I think the conservation movement realizes now that it’s a mistake and are going to pretty impressive ends to rectify it.

CLARK: Give us an example of how conservation has negatively affected the people who live on the land, and I was thinking maybe about the Bahtera [PH] or the Pygmy.

DOWIE: Yeah, the Bahtera in Uganda, the Bahtera pygmies who were in 1993 evicted from the Boyndie, the impenetrable forest where they had been living for thousands of years clearly sustainably.  That’s a very, very healthy forest.  They actually after the area, the Boyndie, they were allowed to stay for quite a while.  And it was rumor that was spread furthered by Dian Fossey that the Pygmy were killing the great apes, which they weren’t and that’s what led to their eviction and they now live in the Perimeter of the Boyndie in rundown squalorous villages and have had their entire livelihood and their culture taken from them.

CLARK: Have they been allowed back at all to their native lands?

DOWIE: Yes, they can get permits to go in and harvest honey.  They can get permits to go in and visit their ancestors graves that are scattered through the Boyndie, but the Boyndie is guarded now by eco guards, armed eco guards who if they believe that somebody is poaching inside the forest, they’ll shoot them.

CLARK: I don’t want to ignore what’s happened here in the United States where when it comes to land conservation, we’ve had our stories of not treating native people so well either and I’m just thinking we’re talking on the heels of the Ken Burns’ TV documentary on the National Parks where Burns hit on the tension between preservation and use, but didn’t actually come down on one side of the issue or the other.  Talk a little bit about what happened in this country.

DOWIE: He does acknowledge that native people have been evicted from American national parks.  This whole model of conservation began here in Yosemite in the middle of the 19th Century, which was at the time occupied by Lewach [PH] Indians.  And John Muir and the other people who were inspired to create a national park where Yosemite is, were not impressed with the Indians.  In fact, Muir was revolted by them, and asked that they be removed from the Park and they were.  That happened again in Yellowstone and several other American parks around the country. That became known as the Yosemite model of conservation, and was exported by the organizations that now dominate global conservation, all of which are American organizations.

CLARK: You describe your book as a “good guy versus good guy story.”  So is there anybody in particular to blame for how this seemingly good idea has gone wrong?

DOWIE: It is a good guy versus good guy story.  I mean, you’ve got to say that people who are trying to preserve biological diversity and endangered species around the world are on a good mission. However, I think it’s a misperception on the part of the early leaders of global conservation that native people were not good stewards of the land, which was based on their lack of textbook science really. And a disrespect for their traditional ecological knowledge which they had accumulated over thousands of years largely drive, of course, by food security, not by conservation.

CLARK: Explain a little bit more about what you mean by that.

DOWIE: Well, if you’re living in an area and you’re relying on what that area delivers to you in the way of sustenance, your primary motivation for protecting the natural health of that area is food security. It’s not some romantic notion about wilderness or it’s not a tourist industry.  It is food security.  That’s the primary motive.

CLARK: You want to make sure that you’re going to have food for your family and for your children’s children. That sort of thing?

DOWIE: Yes, exactly and strangely enough if a culture operates that way in an ecosystem, it seems to be pretty good for the ecosystem.

CLARK: So how do you propose we strike a better balance between what’s good for the land and what’s good for the people who live there?

DOWIE: Well, first of all, let the people who live there stay there when you grade a protected area.   In Canada there has recently been two interesting developments.  One in British Columbia where native people have been allowed to return to a national park, and then another in Quebec where a national park has been formed on Cree land and the Crees are going to stay there, continue their life ways and manage the park.  I think that’s the future of national parks and the future of protected areas. Involve the local people in the conservation project and the management of it.  And respect the traditional ecological knowledge that they’ve developed, which has kept the place as healthy as it is.

CLARK: Are there any examples of places that are getting conservation right from the get-go?

DOWIE: One place I think where the future of conservation is going to be severely tested is in Gabon.  The reason I say that is the country very suddenly created 13 national parks recently all in areas that could easily have become forest concessions or mining concessions, all of which are occupied by indigenous people.  So here is a test case now for a nation backed by the United States government, which put $56 million into this park system and supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society and three other big international conservation groups to do it right.  I mean, to go in there and start negotiating right away, do what they’re doing in Canada with the Cree and let the native people stay there and be part of the management and protection of these areas.

CLARK: Mark, we’ve been talking about the native peoples of these lands that have been created into parks and how they’ve been kicked off that land and haven’t really done so well. Are there examples of these people who are gone now as a result of what’s happened?

DOWIE: I would say not entirely gone, but I would say that the  Basarwa, the Bushmen of the Kalahari.  Their culture is seriously threatened by the fact that they have been removed and put into basically what amount to concentration camps.  The Massai who for thousands of years have cultivated and ranged their cattle in the Rift Valley. They have been seriously decimated as a culture and I visited the Batlo [PH], and it was very sad to see how rapidly they are losing their song, their dance and their indigenous culture.  Land is part of culture.  Culture shapes place and place shapes culture, and if you remove people from the place where their culture evolved, they’re going to lose that culture and it happens in like less than a generation.

CLARK: Writer Mark Dowie’s book is called “Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.”   Mark, good to speak with you. Thanks.

DOWIE: Thanks, Katy.

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• Photos
• Wikipedia: Colony Collapse Disorder

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KATY CLARK: While France may be going after reckless tourists, it is welcoming another kind of traveler, honey bees.  It’s been rough going for the bees in recent years, a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder has been killing them off in mass in various parts of the world.  It’s still not clear what’s causing CCD, though there are some suspected culprits including pesticides, parasites and a reduction of biodiversity.  But bee colonies are doing well in some unexpected places like French cities.  Genevieve Oger reports from Paris.

GENEVIEVE OGER: It’s market day in this eastern Paris neighborhood. Like most Friday mornings, Remy Vanbremeersch is here selling his honey, pollen, and other bee-related products. The honey from this very neighborhood, called Miel de Place des Fetes is the most popular. It’s sold out by mid-morning.  There are an estimated 300 hives in the city of Paris. They’re found in city parks, private gardens and the rooftops of public buildings. And contrary to what you might think, the bees are thriving here and in other cities across France.  Beekeeper Remy Vanbremeersch opens the gate to an unused public park in the city’s 20th district. This past spring, he placed six hives here with the blessing of city officials.

REMY VANBREMEERSCH: [With Translator] City Hall is very keen to bring more wildlife into the city. So when I submitted a plan to set up a few hives in different places, they said yes right away. City councilors are very supportive. For them it’s an easy way to do something green in the city.

OGER: This year’s honey has already been harvested, but Vanbremeersch checks on the bees regularly, to care for the hives and protect them from parasites. He keeps hives in three different Paris locations. And has plans to set up six more on a large boulevard just down the street. He also owns some colonies on a nature reserve south of the city.

REMY VANBREMEERSCH: [With Translator] In the four years I’ve kept hives in Paris, my smallest harvest was 90 pounds of honey per hive, and my best harvest was 170 pounds of honey per hive.

OGER: That’s typically much more than what he produces from a hive in the countryside. He attributes this to warmer temperatures in the city and also greater biodiversity. Paris isn’t known as a green city, but there are thousands of different species of plants and trees in the parks that bloom in succession. Whereas outside the city, single-crop farming dominates the landscape.  Vanbremeersch adds that pesticide levels appear to be lower in the city as well.  Back at the market, customers, like this man, keep coming back for Remy Vanbremeersch’s distinctive honey.

MAN: I was originally quite surprised that there was Paris honey. But some friends gave me a pot of it and I found it really excellent. It’s very, very perfumed. A very perfumed type of honey.

OGER: Urban beekeepers aren’t suggesting that all hives should be moved into the city, but they say urban beekeeping is a great way to educate people about what’s been happening to bees around the world and generate support for campaigns to protect them.  For the World, this is Genevieve Oger in Paris.

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• Article and video from London’s Telegraph newspaper
• BBC coverage

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KATY CLARK: Andrea Crossan’s report was funded in part by a fellowship from the International Reporting Project.  And here’s another news item about a lack of animals.  Not lions, but zebras.  This comes from the Gaza Strip.   It concerns the Marah Land Zoo in Gaza City.  According to zookeepers, two zebras starved to death during the military conflict with Israel last January.  So the zoo has come up with a creative way to replace the missing animals.  It took two white donkeys, some masking tape, and black hair dye, and it hired a professional painter to give the animals zebra-like stripes.

NIDAL BAROOD: And now that’s ever been.

CLARK: The zoo’s administrator, Nidal Barood, said he created the fake zebras for two reasons.

First, he said the zoo smuggles all animals from Egypt through tunnels, and it’s difficult to smuggle zebras.  And second, he said zebras are very expensive.  Besides, according to news reports from Gaza the local children don’t seem to mind that their new zebras are, well, not quite authentic.

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KATY CLARK: Reaction around the globe to President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize has been mixed.  That’s certainly the case in the Middle East.  The World’s Aaron Schachter reports from Beirut.

AARON SCHACHTER: Here in Lebanon, Hezbollah Member of Parliament Hassan Fadlallah reacted skeptically to the news.  He said he had seen no signs of peace from President Obama yet, and he said he’s waiting for deeds not words.  But to the south in Israel President Shimon Peres offered effusive praise for Mr. Obama perhaps a little over the top, considering the recent disagreements Israel has had with the U.S. President.

HASAN FADLALLAH: Here in Jerusalem the bells will ring again with a new hope, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believer on earth, and both of us can act together to move properly and determinedly to provide a new reality. Mr. President, I congratulate you from the depth of my heart.

SCHACHTER: But the reaction on the street from many in this part of the world can best be summed up this way. “Huh?”

MUNA NASHASHIBI:   Of course, of course they will be skeptical.

SCHACHTER: Muna Nashishibi monitors media in the Middle East for a London-based organization called Arab Media Watch.  She says it’s not that people in the region don’t like President Obama, or appreciate the things he’s had to say, it’s just that, well, he hasn’t actually done anything yet.

NASHISHIBI: He projected an image that there can be change, you know, but we see now he hasn’t really worked towards that change.  I’ve lost a bit of confidence in this Nobel committee really.

SCHACHTER: In the larger Middle East more mixed reaction, some of it quite predictable. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, an embattled U.S. ally, expressed appreciation of the president’s, quote, “Creation of friendly international relations.”  The Taliban, on the other hand, condemned the award as unjust, saying president Obama has not taken a single step for peace in Afghanistan.  Surprisingly, Mr. Obama did get some praise from Iran.  A spokesman for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who has never expressed any great enthusiasm for America’s Commander in Chief, said  quote,  “We hope that this gives him the incentive to walk in the path of bringing justice to the world order.”   In awarding the Peace Prize to Mr. Obama, the Nobel committee said it had attached special importance to his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. That’s crucial these days in this region. Many observers believe if Iran’s nuclear program isn’t checked, it’s only a matter of time before a full-blown nuclear arms race takes off.  Mohamid El Baradei heads the International Atomic Energy Agency.  He says no one is more deserving of the prize today than Barack Obama.

MOHAMID EL BARADEI: He’s committed to democracy.  Dialogue and diplomacy are the best way to resolve conflict.  So, the Nobel Prize Committee in many ways tried to not just recognize achievement but encourage people who are on the right track.

SCHACHTER: For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter in Beirut.

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KATY CLARK: Helge Pharo is an advisor to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, and Professor Pharo, we just heard the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency say that he thinks the Peace Prize is not just for achievements, but for people who are quote “on the right track”.  Is that the way the Committee sees the prize?

HELGE PHARO: I would think so.  The Committee has been known for the last at least 30, maybe 40 years for its increasing activism in promoting ongoing processes, encouraging processes they see as leading to peace.  But it is not just that.  It’s also clearly linked in Nobel world with the promotional rapport between nations, and reduction of [SOUNDS LIKE] the rule on their prior records, which is related to the cause and the world seeing reduction of standing armies.

CLARK: Do you think then …  It sounds as if you would think that the decision to award the Peace Prize to President Obama is a way to send a political message here to the U.S. about this country’s role in international affairs.

PHARO: I think they see President Obama as having brought a voice likely to work a major  change in the way the United States interacts with other nations.  Yes, and I think that’s a major point.

CLARK: If you could just elaborate.  I mean, what is the message that they are trying to send here?  Is it a message directed specifically towards the United States?

PHARO: Well, this would be guess work on my part because I don’t know what the Committee has actually discussed among themselves, but I would think that since its approach is very different from its predecessor goals alone that he shows willingness to negotiate, to talk on fairly equal terms regardless, and to go in and try to solve outstanding problems in cooperation with others, I think is for the committee must be very significant.

CLARK: This year there’s a lot of surprise at the choice of President Barack Obama as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, people saying that he just hasn’t accomplished enough yet to deserve this prize.  To what extent does the committee care about the reaction to its choice here?

PHARO: I think it’s fair to say that the Nobel Committee always has to work within fairly great influence in what they can do and not to antagonize Norwegian public opinion, not to antagonize or to see themselves as making internationally seen as difficult decisions or unpopular decisions, and that they should look at previous awards.  They have veered, so to speak, between realist awards and … How can I say, [INDISCERNIBLE] awards. It is a difficult balancing act between the realist approach in making peace, and the support of good intentions and good peace.  I think they must be aware that this will be a controversial award in the sense that there is still a war going on in Afghanistan.  We don’t know what’s happening there, but they must have taken that into consideration.

CLARK: Helge Pharo is a professor at the University of Oslo in Norway.  He’s also an advisor to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.  Thank you for your time.

PHARO: Thank you.

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World.  In Spain’s northwest region of Catalonia, it’s just gotten a lot more expensive to get lost in the woods, at least for the reckless who need rescuing.  The Catalan government says it spends about $3 million a year plucking the ill-prepared off mountains.  So rescue authorities have come up with a list of mountain no-nos.  Commit one and it could cost you a lot of money.  The World’s Gerry Hadden has the story.

GERRY HADDEN: Here in the mountains in Catalonia, there are now officially three acts of carelessness that could dent your wallet big time.  The first, going hiking without proper gear.  Here’s an example.  A woman who went hiking in the snow last spring in loafers.

WOMAN: [In Spanish]

HADDEN: I just might slip, she laughed, as she slipped along.  The second act of carelessness is not heeding warning signs.  For example ignoring that big yellow one that reads, “Stay off the glacier.” And the third and most egregious no-no, calling on your cell phone for a rescue when you don’t really need one.

OLGA LANAU: [In Spanish]

HADDEN: Olga Lanau runs Catalonia’s emergency rescue operations.  She says if you don’t clearly violate any of these rules, we’re not going to charge you for the rescue.  But there are cases that are quite clear.  From time to time people call in and lie about their situation just so that we’ll come pick them up.  So far, most serious hikers and climbers seem to support the pay-to-be-saved norms for knuckleheads.  Barcelona businessman Fernando Montenys has been climbing Catalonia’s highest peaks for 15 years.  He says hiking has become more popular in recent years, attracting both the prudent and increasingly the foolhardy.

MONTENYS: [In Spanish]

HADDEN: He says when you head out into the woods you have to take safety measures to be at least minimally prepared.  Some people don’t even check the weather or they’re not in proper physical shape or they don’t have the right equipment.  Every weekend the rescue teams are out lifting people off the mountains.  Support may be strong for the spirit of the law, but the letter of it is causing some confusion.  Joan Badia was born near the foothills of the Pyrenees and has been backpacking the back country most of his adult life.  He says in the wild mishaps can happen for many reasons, and the line between recklessness and bad luck is often unclear.

JOAN BADIA:   [In Spanish]

HADDEN: He says the new rules don’t just apply to climbers but to everyone even to people who go out to pick mushrooms.  If a mushroom picker steps on a rock and slips and falls, is that recklessness?  What happens next?  That person has every right to be rescued.  Are they going to charge him for it later?  The Catalan government says that will be up to the rescuers who will assess each case.  If they deem you careless, expect a bill later in the mail.  And here’s some friendly advice, open it sitting down. For a typical mountain rescue involving three crew and a helicopter you’ll be looking at roughly $15,000.  If it takes them three or four days to find you, you might consider selling your house.  Badia, along with Catalonia’s hiking clubs, call that price excessive.

BADIA: [In Spanish]

HADDEN: He says, I know a guy who works as a mountain rescuer.  They go out every day on training runs.  So for example to charge someone $3,000 an hour just for the helicopter is abusive.  The real cost of keeping those helicopters flying is already covered in the regional budget.  Badia says they should charge just enough to dissuade your typical weekend warriors from traipsing about without say boots or rain-gear without forcing them into bankruptcy.  But before Catalans feel too put upon, they should know they’re not alone.  In some U.S. states you’re charged for rescues. Same goes for Switzerland and France.  And now France is even considering charging people it rescues overseas.  That might include sailors seized by pirates or tourists who visit war zones.  For The World I’m Gerry Hadden in Barcelona.

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KATY CLARK: The East African nation of Kenya has 35 national parks and game reserves. The parks attract tourists who come to see wildlife, and at the top of the list of must-see animals is the lion, but t Africa’s lions are dwindling.  In response, some Kenyan conservationists are pushing a controversial proposal.  They say to save the lions, lions must be hunted.  The World’s Andrea Crossan reports.

ANDREA CROSSAN: It’s dusk on the African Savanna, and the sounds are typical, lions and hyenas fighting over a dead impala.  But tonight there are no lions or hyenas here.  The animal cries come from a CD, played over a large speaker in front of a safari truck.  The man behind the wheel is lion conservationist Lawrence Frank.  He’s trying to lure the big cats by tricking them, pretending there’s been a fresh kill.  So far, no luck.

LAWRENCE FRANK: The only collared  lions we could find are very far away from here so they probably didn’t even hear all our efforts.

CROSSAN: Lawrence Frank has put radio collars on lions to study them. He heads the organization Living with Lions.  He’s working to save Kenya’s remaining wild lions and other predators living outside national parks.  It’s an increasingly difficult job. Here in the Northern Kenyan district of Laikipia, more and more land is being converted from wildlife habitat to farms and that’s bad for lions.

FRANK: When the young lions move out of their prides into the community areas there is so little wildlife there, and so much livestock that they start taking livestock they’re promptly poisoned.

CROSSAN: Poisoned by farmers.  For a small farmer, losing even one animal to a lion can be huge financial loss. Lawrence Frank says it’s easy for Westerners to criticize farmers who retaliate against stock-killing lions, but you have to put yourself in the farmers’ shoes.

FRANK: We like to sit in our New York apartments or our san Francisco houses and think about all the wonderful wildlife in Africa and watch them on the Disney Channel.  And yet, we wouldn’t dream of tolerating grizzly bears and wolves and mountain lions where we live.

CROSSAN: Actually, some Americans do tolerate large predators, but then in the U.S. sport hunting is legal. That’s how states manage wildlife populations and raise revenue for conservation.  In Kenya, sport hunting has been outlawed since 1977.  Frank and some other conservationists say it’s time to change that.  They argue that if Kenya’s lions could be hunted, farmers could make money allowing trophy hunters on their land.  And those farmers would then have a stake in protecting lions as a species even if individual lions were killed from time to time. Kenya’s Vice President, Kalonzo Musyoka, says his government does not currently plan to lift the hunting ban, but he admits the move would be popular in some quarters.

KALONZO MUSYOKA: I know that Arabs from the Middle Eastern countries would love to  come and set camp here and hunt and kill.  And, you know, we have also to protect and, therefore, there’s a need to strike a balance again.

CROSSAN: Striking that balance could be difficult.  Many conservationists say that allowing any hunting could quickly lead to over-hunting, and put lions in an even more precarious state.  Will Travers is Chief Executive of the Born Free Foundation, an animal protection group.  He says that Kenya makes a lot of money as it is from wildlife tourism, and more of that money should be used to help farmers who lose their cattle and sheep to lions.

WILL TRAVERS: There’s a billion dollars going into the Kenyan economy.  And it’s important that significant amount of that  goes to rural communities and is linked to the fact that that the money is coming from wildlife tourism so that local communities can indeed appreciate that their health services, and their education services, and their infrastructure services are being supported by wildlife.

CROSSAN: While this political and academic fight goes on, a new threat is harming both livestock and lions.  Kenya has been hit by a devastating drought.  Rivers are drying up and grasslands have become parched dust bowls.  On this night, Lawrence Frank’s CD of recorded lions hasn’t drawn in any real lions.  The only animals that have come to investigate are hyenas.  So Frank packs up his speaker and heads home.

FRANK: But of course you know it’s always a crap shoot.  So, you try it.  Sometimes it works.

CROSSAN: He knows the lions are out there.  At least they are for now.  For the World, I’m Andrea Crossan, Laikipia, Kenya.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.